Frank Beacham's Journal

Pictures in the Everglades

Standing waist deep in the swamp, under attack by aggressive mosquitoes and keenly aware of the nearby alligators and snakes, I fumbled under a large piece of dark cloth to see the dim upside down image through the back of a wooden view camera.

"You know in the video world we have viewfinder hoods," I shouted from under the thick black cover to Clyde Butcher, sweltering from the oppressive heat.

"Hoods are for wimps," responded Butcher, one of the world's best landscape photographers. "This is Mathew Brady stuff!"

Yes, it is, I quickly realized. Photography as it was done in the 19th century, when the great Mathew Brady and his assistants lugged similar equipment around battlefields to create the most memorable images of the American Civil War.

As a member of the video generation, I found myself in a bit of a technology time warp. A world where a new fangled gadget like a viewfinder hood is looked upon with suspicion. In this branch of image making, old fashioned craft and vision reign supreme over new technology and the latest widgets.

 Frank Beacham and Clyde Butcher in the Everglades. It was the summer of 1996.

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Yet, I found going back to the basics a strangely satisfying experience. Working with 4x5 inch black and white negatives and huge, radiant high definition prints resulted in a creative high I have yet to match with the high tech tools of these digital times.

I had first gotten a glimpse of Clyde Butcher's photography a few years ago when I stumbled into a PBS television special about his task of preserving on film Florida's rapidly disappearing Everglades. I was instantly attracted to his work. After calling his gallery, I found he offers occasional workshops in large format photography at his 13-acre wilderness compound in South Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve.

Butcher, whose talents at photographing nature rank up there with the late Ansel Adams, normally works with 8x10 and 12x20 format Wisner view cameras. His monochrome prints range in size from 11x14 (which he considers barely a wallet photo) to huge wall murals that are stunning in their scope, richness and detail.

Thinking Butcher's Everglades outpost would be a brief, but splendid, break from electronic media, I was surprised to find that a CBS Sunday Morning crew would be completing a video profile of the photographer on the second day of our workshop. Ironically, I would get a side-by-side comparison of the film and video images made in the picturesque swamp and the chance to ponder the methods by which each was created.

The CBS crew set up a video viewing station in Butcher's darkroom where we were crafting the prints from negatives we had taken the day before. Their video -- made efficiently and quickly -- had the crisp, snappy color and technically savvy look of work done by a top professional network crew. 

Yet, clearly missing from the video was the emotional bang that had drawn me to Butcher's photographs in the first place. How was it that Butcher could tell a whole story so well on a single frame of black and white film while the thousands of moving video images only skimmed the emotional surface of the subject? 

Was it simply a matter of resolution? Do we not have "fine art" video because of the limitations of the television medium to resolve detail?  If so, then why -- after well over a decade -- haven't we seen high definition video used as a artistic medium?  If it is not the video medium itself, does the answer lie in how we've been conditioned to use it?  Or does it go much deeper?

After the CBS crew had finished and was on the way to their next assignment, we in the darkroom were still tinkering with our prints, trying to decide where to dodge and burn or how to vary the contrast with filters.

Our still images were obviously produced through a much slower and more deliberate process than the video. They had a handmade quality. There was even a subtle aesthetic with the equipment itself; something I never felt before with electronics.

Take the Wisner camera. It's more like a piece of fine furniture than a technical tool. Made of beautifully finished mahogany wood with adjustable brass fittings, the camera is a timeless design. Not only does it offer a wide range of options to the creative photographer, but one could never imagine it ever becoming obsolete. 

While other types of photography have succumbed to computer-assisted automation, somehow the methods of making large format landscape photographs have remained traditional. Here the human mind never relinquishes control to a computer.

The photographer must think about every step taken. Each adjustment is made by hand. Careful consideration must be made to planes of focus, depth of field and the perspective of the subject. Even then, the image on the camera's viewing surface is upside down and very dim.  

From the very first day, the large format photographer assumes the role of artisan. For us video "wimps" -- used to the "point and shoot" conveniences of modern cameras -- it's at first hard to be confident about decisions of composition and image sharpness under that dark cloth. 

Yet for an old pro like Butcher -- with more than 30 years experience under his belt -- these seemingly large obstacles have been turned to pluses. He uses his eyes, not the viewfinder, to frame the image. He can do this because he instinctively knows what each lens will see and how it will see it.

The slow and tedious nature of large format photography, says Butcher, forces the creator of the image to take time to think about the picture being made. Sometimes it takes Butcher hours to make a single photograph. This contemplative method, he is quick to point out, is far more important than technique in helping convey a powerful emotional experience on a sheet of film.

One workshop participant asked Butcher what makes a visual artist. He estimated that it first takes about 20 years of learning the nuts and bolts -- the techniques of image making -- followed by another period when that technique is suppressed, becoming second nature.

For most of us, only then does real artistic vision begin to kick in. And even then, nothing is guaranteed. It all depends on the fragile talent and circumstances of the individual at a given moment as to whether new artistic boundaries will be broken.

In Butcher's life, the transition from successful commercial photographer to artist came in a tragic way. He says he found his creative voice in the grief that followed his son's death in an auto accident. The shock of that death led him to re-evaluate his approach to his work and resulted in his commitment to fine art nature photography.

It's a long way from a Florida swamp to the floors of today's bustling video studio. But in Clyde Butcher's wilderness preserve, there are valuable lessons for those who would attempt to use video as an artistic medium. 

Butcher's work reminds us that the art of the picture is not found in technology or technique. It's in the mind of the maker. The only artistic limitations we face in any medium are within ourselves.

Clyde Butcher's Fisheating Creek Memorial Tree

Revisiting Orson Welles is a Reminder of Vast Change in the Arts

I moved to New York City nearly 19 nears ago in large part due to Orson Welles. Through a strange set of circumstances, I was lucky enough to work with the great man during the final year of his life in Los Angeles. After his death in 1985, I came to New York to interview the living members of the Mercury Theatre Company for a documentary on Welles. I fell in love with New York City and eventually moved here.

The New York City I was attracted to was of the 1930s. To hear the exciting stories I was told by the Mercury actors, I thought those wonderful times still existed. Like so many before me, I was lured to the city by a false dream. One soon learns they have to make their own dreams come true in this town.

On Sunday afternoon, I was reminded of this again by Timothy “Speed” Levitch, the legendary New York City tour guide, who gave an Orson Welles tour of the Broadway area as a promotion for Me and Orson Welles, the new film opening this week. Though I had been an executive producer of Cradle Will Rock, a 1999 film about Orson, I had never walked the streets to see where Welles had actually worked.

Timothy “Speed” Levitch, performer and legendary tour guide. Photos by Frank Beacham

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Sadly, there was little to see. Just as theatre itself exists only in the memories of those who witness it, Levitch reminded us that very little of Welles’ New York of 1937 is now left. “Just like us, the city goes through constant transformation,” Levitch said. “That’s why there's almost nothing of old Times Square left. The city has been destroyed and rebuilt 5,000 times already. As we walk along the concrete of the city, think of it as the skin of a living being.” It was an interesting way to think of constant change.

 

As we walked past the Marriott Marquis, Levitch reminded us of the 1985 massacre when three Broadway theatres were torn down to build the huge hotel. Hilariously, however, Levitch noted that three of the hotel’s “homogenized, plastic conference rooms” are each named for among the most radical, socialistic, innovative minds in American theatre: Clifford Odets, Eugene O’Neill and Thornton Wilder. Only in New York!

 

As we approached the site of the original Mercury Theatre at 110 West 41st Street, where Welles and the Mercury produced the modern dress Julius Ceasar—the subject of the new movie—I was saddened. It's now a dreary, nondescript office building. This Wednesday, after all these years, a plaque is finally going up to mark the location as a historic site.

Orson Welles brought innovation and daring to American theatre. The Mercury’s mission was to break the fourth wall and “scratch the nervous system of its audience.” It was an exciting, provocative period of Broadway that is now long gone. To relive the experience today, the closest we can come is to see movies like Me and Orson Welles.

At least, in our dumbed down society, films like this are still being made. Bravo to those who still celebrate great artistic vision. There’s so damn little of it anymore. 

Christian McKay as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles

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It says a lot about New York City in 2009 that it took the promotion of a movie to finally install a plaque marking the original site of Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre. But finally, Thanksgiving week, it happened. It was part of the hoopla for the opening of Me and Orson Welles. In the photo is Christian McKay and Zac Efron, actors from the film. 

The scene of such a burst of creativity should have been on every tourist map for 50 years. But it was lost. Finally, for those who want to know, the place—now a dreary office building—is marked at 110 West 41st Street. 

On the movie, "Me and Orson Welles"

This film is an excellent portrayal of a truly magic moment in the history of Broadway theatre. In 1937, there were about 200 plays open at one time in New York City and the average cost was $12,000. Everyone could afford theatre then, since prices were very low. It was a wonderful era in New York City, despite economic hard times. Genius bloomed. Creativity flowed. And life was affordable. This story will transport you back to that time. And, the actor who plays Orson Welles—Christian McKay—is a revelation. I knew the man and Christian has nailed him cold.

Jeanne-Claude—Christo’s Better Half—Pulled Off Some Big Moments in Art

I first met Jeanne-Claude in 1983, when she and her husband, the artist Christo, were doing their Surrounded Islands project in Biscayne Bay in Miami. The couple involved the entire community in their huge projects—because they had to in order to make them happen and because collaboration with the community was part of the art itself.

All Christo photos by Frank Beacham

The last installation I experienced by the couple was in 2005, when they installed 7,503 vinyl gates with saffron-colored nylon panels in Central Park. Each day, the panels looked different—due to the weather conditions and the direction of the light. When it snowed that February, the panels took on a transcendent beauty I’ll never forget.

 

I was very sad to learn that Jeanne-Claude, at 74, has died. Though Christo’s name is better known, everyone that knew the team understood that Jeanne-Claude was an equal partner. The single name was for easier branding. The couple met in 1958 and three years later did their first project of oil drums and rolls of industrial paper wrapped in tarpauli on the docks in Cologne, Germany.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work always had critics. On virtually every project, they were accused of wasting money, creating environmentally unsound works and doing stunts without intellectual content. In every case, I think the critics were wrong. Very wrong.  

The couple’s projects were always meant to be temporary and to leave a lasting impression on those who participated in their creation. Jeanne-Claude called it “the quality of love and tenderness that we human beings have for what does not last.” 

I will never forget their works, just as I always remember seeing a great painting or other work of art. All we humans have is memory, anyway. “We want to create works of art of joy and beauty, which we will build because we believe it will be beautiful,” Jeanne-Claude once said. “The only way to see it is to build it. Like every artist, every true artist, we create them for us.”

RIP, Jeanne-Claude!

Bob Dylan Opens Three-Nighter in New York City With Good Cheer

It has become a standing joke. I come home from every Bob Dylan concert and say it’s the best I’ve ever been too. This has been going on for more than 30 years. I can’t help it. I love the man and his music. So I’m not a good person to offer a dispassionate opening night review of Dylan’s three-night stand in New York.

But I’ve got some pictures—taken against the strong will of the security guards, with whom I always play a cat and mouse game. Dylan smiled more than usual, and moved from behind his electric piano to sing and play the harp a few times. I’ll let others review this concert, but I think it was the absolute best ever! 

 Bob frowns, then smiles... 

Charlie Sexton on guitar

 Tony Garnier on bass

 and George Receli on drums 

 Dion opened the New York City shows for Dylan. It was a killer performance—both new songs and old rock & roll favorites.

Seeing the Forest

To fully understand the broad implications of any new technology, it’s important to see the forest—not just the trees. That’s common sense, one might think, until it comes down to trying to separate the forest from the tree people.

America’s television broadcasters, the tree people—with a status quo to maintain—have tried to block a clear view of the forest. Along the way, their delusions have sold the equivalent of several Brooklyn Bridges.

Today, the Federal Communications Commission is trying to reclaim airwaves to expand the use of low-cost wireless Internet services throughout the nation. They have suggested taking it from the broadcasters—since they are the one group in the nation who has never paid for the use of the spectrum they use.  Long ago, you see, the broadcasters were given the use of free spectrum in exchange for providing a public service.

What the FCC is proposing is more than fair. They would actually pay the broadcasters to get the spectrum back. Yet, the broadcasters are still screaming bloody murder. 

The broadcasters tell us they still provide a valuable public service. They actually, with a straight face, contend the news from their blow-dried anchors is essential to keeping the public informed. Like I said, they are delusional!

Of course, this is all total bull. We need cheap or free Internet access because cable and the telcos are sucking us dry. Very few people watch over-the-air TV anymore. And there’s good reason. 

I say give the broadcasters zilch. Allow them a chance to buy their spectrum or pull the plug on them. No more free spectrum. In my opinion, their time is up. The have gagged us with excess commercialism. They've dumbed down all they have touched. They've had a license to print money long enough.  It's time to end this charade.

 

Christopher Ricks: Dylan is a Special Kind of Genius

With Bob Dylan making three appearances in New York City this week, it seems there is an unusual burst of activity concerning the artist in town. On Sunday, Christopher Ricks and Sean Wilentz, both writers of books on Dylan, appeared at a roundtable at the Philoctetes Center.

The audience ranged from professional people to teenage kids who had never seen Dylan sing in person. At a coffee shop after the seminar, I sat next to a table of four high school kids fascinated by the artist. One, who had never seen Dylan in concert and had no money, told the others of his plans to break into the theatre to see the man in concert. When I left, I wished him luck.

Since we just wrote about Sean Wilentz in the previous post, this time I’ll focus on Christopher Ricks, a professor of humanities at Boston University. In 2004, while a professor of poetry at Oxford in England, Ricks published Dylan’s Visions of Sin.

Ricks compared Dylan to other artists, including writers and actors, who had sustained long careers. He noted the old maxim that anything an artist creates will be misinterpreted and will follow him for the rest of his life. “That’s a real fear for a performing artist,” Ricks said. “You’re caught in a role and can never get out of it.” 

One such artist, he said, was Lenny Bruce, who Ricks said didn’t have enough just being himself. “Bruce was all himself in that one extraordinary thing that he did,” Ricks said. Dylan on the other hand—because every event is a parade—multiplies the parades by maximizing the number of public performances he does with his never ending tour.

Christopher Ricks at the Philoctetes Center in New York. Photo by Frank Beacham

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Ricks noted there are many kinds of genius. Jack Nicholson is an actor who plays essentially the same kind of character very well in many different kinds of films, he said. There are great musicians who go their entire lives doing the same music. Then there are actors like Laurence Olivier, whose Othello is “a different world,” said Ricks. He puts Dylan in Olivier’s camp.

On Dylan’s songwriting, Ricks said it’s good to have instinct, but one can also think too much. “You must program your brain not to think too much,” he said. “You’ve got to keep your brain under control. Otherwise there will be too much conscious control.”  Dylan, he said, has struck the correct balance between the two. 

What Influence Did Aaron Copland & Allen Ginsberg Have on Bob Dylan?

Often, when confronted with huge amounts of disparate information gathered over a long period of time, one needs to pause and connect the dots. It’s only then that the pieces take form and give shape to a larger, more coherent story. That happened to me with Sean Wilentz’s excellent presentation this week on his upcoming new book, Bob Dylan in America.

Wilentz, one of best writers on Bob Dylan, does on a wider scale what Greil Marcus did in The Old, Weird America, his revealing examination of Dylan's Basement Tapes and their links to a now lost American tradition not found in most history books. Wilentz, through a series of linked essays, attempts to examine what Bob Dylan tells us about America and what America tells us about Bob Dylan.

Sean Wilentz at the 92nd Street Y.  Photo by Frank Beacham

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In a preview of the work-in-progress presented at Nina Goss’s Dylan class at the 92nd Street Y, Wilentz discussed two parts of the book: the effects on Dylan by the American composer Aaron Copland and beat poet Allen Ginsberg and the other writers of the Beat Generation.

Aaron Copland

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In essence, Wilentz connected the dots between the American Communist world of the 1930s, the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s, and the folk music era of the 1960s. From those connections, he showed how Bob Dylan fused the beat literary tradition with his own music, while somehow wielding huge political influence without revealing his personal political preferences to his audience.

While I was aware of so many of the individual events cited by Wilentz, I had not made many of the connections between them. That’s the true value his new book, due to be out in September, 2010.  

Aaron Copland, who was very close to Charles Seeger, Pete’s father, wrote the film score in 1939 for Of Mice and Men, the John Steinbeck novella, for director Lewis Milestone. Young Jack Kerouac saw that movie in high school and later wrote about it in Chorus 54 of his poetry book, Mexico City Blues. 

      

Dylan was greatly influenced by Kerouac’s "breathless, dynamic bop phrases," and called Mexico City Blues the first poetry to speak to him in his own American language. Kerouac showed deep understanding for lower working class life and appreciation for Steinbeck’s writing about the box cars of American trains—a trait shared by Dylan.

Pete Seeger, who got among the first permits to sing folk music in Washington Square Park, was—with Earl Robinson and Alan Lomax—directly connected to the leftist political movements of the 1930s. When Dylan reached Greenwich Village in 1961, the Gaslight—where he played—had earlier alternated folk musicians with beat poets. Among those poets with Allen Ginsberg. By the time Dylan got there, the beats were replaced by comics.

Allen Ginsberg and Frank Beacham in 1975

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Even so, Ginsberg and Dylan would become close. Dylan taught Ginsberg to play his harmonium and influenced the poet to perform musically in his later years. From 1963 until Ginsberg’s death, he and Dylan would work and travel together, influencing each other with their talents. Dylan gave Ginsberg the money to purchase a Uher tape recorder on which he composed Wichita Vortex Sutra, the great antiwar lament of the Vietnam era.  

Dylan acknowledged his debt to the beats for his classic song, Chimes of Freedom. "Making music out of nature's sights and sounds had attracted Dylan before in his mystical song Lay Down Your Weary Tune, just as Jack Kerouac had tried to render the ocean's roar as poetry in his book, Big Sur, published in 1962," said Wilentz. "Chimes of Freedom was far outside the old politics of left and right and black and white."

Jack Kerouac

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Dylan and Jack Kerouac never actually met. But Dylan was greatly influenced by his work. In 1965, Kerouac released Desolation Angels, his last great novel about his experiences in the beat circle of writers. In early August of that same year, Dylan recorded Desolation Row on his album, Highway 61 Revisited. The titles were too close to be an accident.

When asked at a news conference where is Desolation Row, Dylan said somewhere down in Mexico. "The ambiance of Desolation Row is reminiscent of Kerouac's Mexico—a mixture of cheap food, fun and ladies for hire, but with a certain sad darkness," said Wilentz. 

In fact, Wilentz said Dylan’s Desolation Row is a Beat-influenced update of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. "It is enough to see the characters from the Bible, Shakespeare, folktales, the circus in Victor Hugo, most of them doomed, as well as Albert Einstein disguised as a noble outlaw, sniffing drain pipes and reciting the alphabet," said Wilentz. "Strange sites and sounds, but all too real. Everything a symbol of itself. Viewed by the singer and his lady looking out on it all, detached, on Desolation Row."

In 1997, in New Brunswick, Canada, Dylan dedicated a performance of Desolation Row to Ginsberg the night after he died. He told the audience it was Allen’s favorite of his songs. 

Dylan—who is known for soaking up the cultural environment around him—more than anyone else in his time merged music and literature. In fact, when Dylan and Ginsberg met in 1963, it was a changing of the guard—with Dylan continuing to evolve the work of both the Beats and the political movements that began in the 1930s.

Connecting all the links can be an enormous help in understanding Bob Dylan’s music and his contribution to American culture. I personally knew so many of the players in Wilentz’s new book, but never quite understood the profound connections until this week. I look forward to this important work as a valuable bookend to Greil Marcus’s already influential The Old Weird America.

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Other influences cited by Sean Wilentz on Bob Dylan:

 
Michael McClure in 1975.  Bob Dylan gave McClure an autoharp, with which the poet began composing a new kind of verse. Dylan was photographed with McClure outside the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco.  Photo by Frank Beacham 

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Izzy Young, an aspiring bookseller and square dance enthusiast from the Bronx, born in 1928, struck up friendships with the most prominent Washington Square regulars. In 1957, he opened a store on McDougall street for selling folk records and books and called it the Folklore Center. Young prized music over ideology. The store became a clearing house for musicians, record company executives, scholars and enthusiasts. It was in Young's store that Bob Dylan hung out, and later met Dave Von Ronk. Young promoted one of Dylan's first concerts. It sold only 53 tickets and Young lost money, but he paid the young Dylan a $50 fee anyway. Photo of Young in Washington Square Park in 2007 by Frank Beacham

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Suze Rotolo was Bob Dylan's girlfriend in the 1960s. She worked on the production staff at a local Greenwich Village theatre and when Dylan visited there to pick her up one day, he was introduced to the theatre work of Bertolt Brecht, the German poet, playwright and theatre director. In his memoir, Chronicles, Dylan recalled Brecht on Brecht, a musical revue he saw there. He said Brecht had an enormous impact on his development as an artist. "My little shack in the universe was about to expand into some glorious cathedral, at least in songwriting terms," Dylan wrote, describing his reaction to the music. "They were like folk songs in nature, but unlike folk songs, too, because they were sophisticated." Dylan was struck in particular by Pirate Jenny from The Threepenny Opera. Photo of Suze Rotolo in 2007 by Frank Beacham.

Folk Music and Political Figures Celebrate the Life of Mary Travers

Sen. John Kerry, the former Democratic presidential nominee from Massachusetts, said the gathering was a like a class reunion of the Nixon enemies list. An earlier Democratic presidential nominee, George McGovern, said Mary Travers was the voice of the people in a troubled time in our country—a voice against bigotry and racism.

The four-hour memorial for Mary Travers, of Peter, Paul and Mary fame, was held on Nov. 9 on what have would been the singer-activist’s 73rd birthday. She died on September 16. The celebration was led by her partners in the group—Peter Yarrow and Noel “Paul” Stookey and held at New York City’s historic Riverside Church.

The memorial opened with Peter and Paul asking the audience to sing Mary’s part on Leaving on Jet Plane, the hit song written in 1966 by John Denver. The pair noted it was the first time in 50 years they had sung without Mary at their side.

 

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Mary was noted for her mesmerizing beauty, fierce activism and an opinion that was laser sharp. “Never ask Mary how she feels about something if you don’t want to know the truth,” said an old friend.  

Whoppee Goldberg, who got a big laugh when she said she once wanted hair like Mary’s, noted that when Mary sang this land is your land there was something deeper to the meaning. “If you don’t like it, get up and move and move, move, move,” Goldberg said. “When Mary spoke, people were with her.”

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George McGovern said he knew many people who died with huge amounts of money. “In my mind, that’s not a test of greatness,” he said. “Greatness is when people can listen to and be moved by songs for 100 years into the future.”

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Former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, a disabled veteran of the Vietnam War, told of growing up with Peter, Paul and Mary, seeing them first in 1962. He held up his original album cover, which he has kept to this day. He later befriended, Mary, sending her onions from Georgia when he learned she was an accomplished cook. Cleland quipped “Without Mary, Peter and Paul would have sounded like two men drunk in a bar.”

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Judy Collins talked of the old days in Greenwich Village when Peter, Paul and Mary were all young. She said Mary had “that thing” possessed by great performers that make the audience want to join her. Collins sang Amazing Grace.

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John Kerry said he always liked Peter, Paul and Mary but “really, really liked Mary” when he first saw her perform while a student at Yale in 1964. She single handily put an end to the 1950’s beehive hair style, he noted. 

In 1971, when Kerry first met Mary in person, it was at a Vietnam rally in Washington, D.C. in front of a million people. He said Mary walked up to him, hugged him and gave him a big kiss. “That was it,” he said, “in front of a million people. That was the beginning of a special friendship.” The group sang at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 when Kerry was nominated for president.

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Peter, Paul and Mary shared Bob Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman. Because of that, they made hits of several Dylan songs, including Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right and Blowin’ in the Wind.

Blowin in the Wind —one of the final songs of the night—was a favorite that left Mary fascinated throughout her life. She noted, even in her final days, that the questions raised in the song remain unanswered to this day.  

Pete Seeger and his grandson, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, rehearse before going on.

Later, on stage.

Tom Paxton sings The Last Thing on My Mind, a song he wrote in the early 1960s

The group, with the addition of Tom Chapin and Theodore Bikel, closes the concert with Dylan's Blowin in the Wind.

Mary Travers looked down from the video screen.

A Tree "Owner" Tries to Outsmart a Squirrel

I have a friend who is annoyed by a squirrel that eats nuts from a tree in his yard. He lives in a house in Florida and claims the tree belongs to him because he bought and paid for the land that the tree is on. 

The squirrel, of course, doesn't recognize my friend's supposed "rights" to the tree because those rights are only determined by other humans. So the squirrel continues his business—gathering nuts and eating them—leaving shells in my friend's driveway.

I tell my friend that, despite his claims to ownership of the tree, the squirrel was not only there first, but will ultimately win the contest—no matter what he does. His "ownership" of the tree can only keep other people away—not squirrels or other animals.

The best part of the situation is that the squirrel is actually smarter than my friend. You see, the squirrel didn't pay one cent for use of the tree. He eats for free whenever he likes. Not a bad deal at all.